Padres at D-backs

PHOENIX  Halfway through the Padres’ season, mighty-mite Alexi Amarista is halfway to the team lead in home runs. And he’s been with the club only since the middle of May.

Whether that says more about Amarista or the Padres in general for most of these first three months of 2012 — probably equal parts both — the Padres did put Amarista’s fourth homer in five games and two-run double to good use in a 6-2 defeat of the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night.

“Alexi’s brought so much energy,” said center fielder Cameron Maybin, whose 485-foot solo homer was the longest ever struck by a Chase Field visitor and the longest in baseball this season. “We call him our little ninja. I think the guys are feeding off him.”

So the Padres reached the midway point of their arduous season with a 31-50 record, but also with their 12th win in their last 22 games and a 5-3 mark to show for this 10-game road trip in progress.

Overshadowed by all the big hits — but also highly representative of the Padres’ recent upswing — was another sharp outing by left-handed starter Clayton Richard. Continuing his climb out of what was once a 1-7 record, Richard recorded the fifth victory in his last six outings, leaving just one out short of his first complete game since late 2010.

“I don’t want to say he was cruising, but he was good,” said manager Bud Black, who came to get the ball when two Diamondbacks reached base in the ninth. “He could smell the finish line.”

And when lefty Joe Thatcher quelled the ninth-inning threat with a strikeout of Jason Kubel, the Padres were not alone in last place in the National League West for the first time since May 22. They’ve climbed into a tie for fourth place with the Colorado Rockies.

You take your improvement where you can find it, and it’s pretty easy to find the major sources of a lot of it, especially in this opener of a three-game series against the defending division champs. The same two newcomers who homered twice apiece in a game Saturday at Denver — Amarista and recent call-up catcher Yasmani Grandal — each hit one out again Monday night.

Incredibly, Grandal’s third homer was also his third major league hit. Ever. (The last player to open his career with three home runs, incidentally, was Keith McDonald of the 2000 St. Louis Cardinals.) Grandal’s ninth-inning single ended the HR spree.

Consider this, too. The Padres have hit 14 home runs at Petco Park all season. They’ve rapped out a dozen in these eight games at Houston, Denver and Phoenix.

Maybin’s, leading off the sixth, was of monumental proportions. The blast doubled Richard’s lead to 2-0.

“It felt even better to get Clayton an extra run,” said Maybin. “He’s been pitching awesome, and in a park like this, no one- or two-run lead is safe. From a momentum-standpoint, it was big, huge.”

Amarista has been nothing short of astonishing, no pun intended, on the hot-weather journey. Since driving in two runs in the finale of the last homestand, Amarista has gone 10-for-21 with 11 RBI and all four of his career homers.

There was the first one — merely a game-winning grand slam iin Houston — and the two homers he hit Saturday at Coors Field in Denver. In his first at bat against Arizona starter Trevor Cahill — the Vista High product who threw a complete-game shutout of the Padres a month ago in San Diego — Amarista provided an almost immediate lead with his solo homer he yanked into the right-field seats.

Having added a third-inning single, Amarista followed Maybin’s leadoff homer in the sixth with a double that brought home Everth Cabrera and Will Venable, leaving himself just a triple shy of the first hitting cycle in Padres history. Cahill set himself up for the trouble, committing an error on Cabrera’s grounder and hitting Venable with a pitch.

The only player Richard walked, leadoff Willie Bloomquist in the sixth, scored. Arizona’s other run came on a seventh-inning homer by Chris Young.